A meditation of rage
Huh, so much for sleep. I was sort of getting there, but then something intervened, some combination of old memories and poisonous hypnogogic imagination that left me in a cycle of bloodstained and heart-pounding half-dreams.
I've been reading a bit about Buddhism recently. The practical side of the religion appeals to me. You might sum it up as, "Focus real hard on what you want to become." Meditate upon the key facets of human goodness-equanimity, compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy-until they become second nature, and then shine forth as your true nature. A sweet idea, if it works.
It certainly works if you run it the other way, through fear and violence and hatred.
Fifteen years ago I was beaten up. Not too severely, as such things go-a night in hospital, cuts and bruises and concussion, a few hours' worth of permanent retrograde amnesia-but I was alone, innocent and very young, and totally unprepared for my first encounter with that kind of unreasoning, unfounded viciousness. It shook me to my core, and worse: it cracked the altar of security and decency that had always been the foundation of my society, and the repercussions echoed in my soul for years.
In retrospect the psychic trap is pathetically evident. All I had to do to escape it was to ask for help-dammit, just to recognise it, to see that what I was experiencing wasn't normal. Instead I sank into reveries of violence, involuntary waking nightmares of vengeance. A hundred different protagonists, a thousand different scenarios, but always the same motif: there again, fighting as though for survival, without restraint or conscience.
Any confrontation or perceived threat could trigger it; an argument with a stranger would leave me wallowing in it for days. And this went on for years; five years at least, maybe ten, and though its intensity has ebbed, I still slip with the ease of long practice into that mental mode of fighting tooth and nail with anything I could find to hand. That's why I'm not sleeping now.
Focus real hard on what you want to become. In the past week or so it's occurred to me that I've spent much too much of the past fifteen years focusing on violence. I shouldn't be surprised to find myself nursing a core of rage and hurt.
Fortunately there are ways out of this. I'm pretty sure it starts by focusing real hard on what I want to become-what, to a significant degree, I still and already am.
I've been reading a bit about Buddhism recently. The practical side of the religion appeals to me. You might sum it up as, "Focus real hard on what you want to become." Meditate upon the key facets of human goodness-equanimity, compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy-until they become second nature, and then shine forth as your true nature. A sweet idea, if it works.
It certainly works if you run it the other way, through fear and violence and hatred.
Fifteen years ago I was beaten up. Not too severely, as such things go-a night in hospital, cuts and bruises and concussion, a few hours' worth of permanent retrograde amnesia-but I was alone, innocent and very young, and totally unprepared for my first encounter with that kind of unreasoning, unfounded viciousness. It shook me to my core, and worse: it cracked the altar of security and decency that had always been the foundation of my society, and the repercussions echoed in my soul for years.
In retrospect the psychic trap is pathetically evident. All I had to do to escape it was to ask for help-dammit, just to recognise it, to see that what I was experiencing wasn't normal. Instead I sank into reveries of violence, involuntary waking nightmares of vengeance. A hundred different protagonists, a thousand different scenarios, but always the same motif: there again, fighting as though for survival, without restraint or conscience.
Any confrontation or perceived threat could trigger it; an argument with a stranger would leave me wallowing in it for days. And this went on for years; five years at least, maybe ten, and though its intensity has ebbed, I still slip with the ease of long practice into that mental mode of fighting tooth and nail with anything I could find to hand. That's why I'm not sleeping now.
Focus real hard on what you want to become. In the past week or so it's occurred to me that I've spent much too much of the past fifteen years focusing on violence. I shouldn't be surprised to find myself nursing a core of rage and hurt.
Fortunately there are ways out of this. I'm pretty sure it starts by focusing real hard on what I want to become-what, to a significant degree, I still and already am.